From Right Wing Watch, a story on how the courts should not be involved in defining marriage because it is a religious institution, but bans on marriage of anything other than a marriage of a man and a woman by state or Federal proposition are somehow O.K.
Senator DeMint’s statement from a radio show (via RightWingWatch):
Anytime the people get a chance to vote on it, even if it is in California or Maine, they want to maintain traditional marriage because people realize how foundational it is to our country, our freedoms, our prosperity and the government has no business redefining marriage. It’s a religious institution. I think we need to make a constitutional case of it. The federal government and our courts have no business redefining marriage and even at the state level, the courts have no business telling us what marriage means. So we need to fight this, because this is not about equal rights. This is about the government legitimizing and promoting behavior that culturally we have always considered wrong. And this is not something that we should give up on.
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So marriage is a religious institution entirely, and unless the government is forbidding anything other than a traditional marriage, then government clearly has no place in this, and it has nothing to do with equal rights, of course. He should know, him not being gay and all that. Sort of like the white person wondering why “separate but equal” wasn’t good enough for some.
Did DeMint get hit on the head on the way to the radio show? “The federal government and our courts have no business redefining marriage,” yet they somehow do have a place in defining what it should be? The sad part is that he has no idea that this is a brain fart of a speech, he probably thinks it went well.
The true complexity and greatest aggravation in the issue of gay marriage is that both Sen. DeMint and yourself are at least partially correct.
Demint is correct in that – I believe – in the 32 times gay marriage has been put to a referendum vote it has only passed once and that was just earlier this month. It obviously is a behavior pattern that the majority of Americans are against.
You, however, are also correct. The government has no basis or authority for treating marriages / civil unions in any way not covered by contract law.
So how should we resovle such an issue – Washington state passed a measure granting equal rights – but not the right to marry. While imperfect, and probably useless across state lines, could such a measure be accepted across the country?
How shouldresolve this issue?
I would say that we should resolve it by forcing the government out of the marriage business, it being a religious sacrament. The government should only ratify and record all of these things as “civil unions” and treat them as for-profit partnerships with rights of survival.
The rest of the “marriage” perks should either be made assignable through said contracts or eliminated.
It won’t happen though
If those contracts with the perks of marriage could be recognized in all 50 states, that itself might be something.